


There's No "I" in Team

by owltrocious



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Implied Ronan/Noah, Noah the Pop Punk Ghost, Nobody Talks About Their Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 22:51:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6585808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owltrocious/pseuds/owltrocious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah has been dead half-again as long as he'd ever been alive, and all of his friends treat him like he's just one of them, but he isn't.</p><p>[Or: Ronan stumbles on old YouTube clips of Noah as a living, breathing, handsome kid.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's No "I" in Team

Ronan sprawls out on his bed with his feet kicked up on the wall, a pile of pillows and wadded-up clothes behind his back. Monmouth is quiet; Gansey's out, Noah isn't there, Chainsaw is napping with beak tucked against her body. He drags his laptop onto his stomach and sips from the beer he holds in the loose ring of thumb and forefinger. His head is full of a blink-182 sticker on a flashily tuned Mustang, a skateboard, an abrupt and brutal close to a short scene. _Two-thousand-seven_ , he thinks. The academic question of the timeline—the child Gansey, the teenage Noah—covers over the time that's passed between them.

Noah has been dead half-again as long as he'd ever been alive, and all of his friends treat him like he's just one of them, but he isn't. Ronan thumbs over the pale pink scars on his belly, three thick fingernail lines that track from the first spot Noah grabbed him and scrape around to his side. The fourth had been too shallow to leave a remnant, but he's caught Noah looking at them with an expression that isn't regret more than a handful of times. Once, he'd snarled _glad to leave a mark_ but the guilt that crossed Noah's face had said _yes_ and Ronan didn't have a response for that.

The sun is low in the sky by the time he finds something, trawling through the depths of the internet for old songs and old kids and things that happened before he understood loss or passion or both. The grainy video, shot on a cell phone, opens on a parking lot in town with a safety-rail and a concrete divider, props for a few generations of soft young punks. In the background he hears music—coming from that glossy bright monstrosity of a muscle car, the muffled strains of a sweet rough voice crying out _for friends who never loved you half as much as me_ —but his eyes are all for the pair on screen.  One is a young, wide-eyed, handsome Barrington Whelk, leaning on the Mustang; the other, the other—

Noah is so fucking vibrant Ronan pauses the video and swallows his mouthful of beer, swallows again on nothing. The frozen frame shows gold sun on gold hair, pale pink lips open on an unselfconscious laugh, competent hands raised to gesture and one casual foot resting on his skateboard. His eyes are bright and his skin is summer-tanned. The black jeans he's wearing are painted on his legs and his tank top is loose, revealing a tantalizing swath of chest, shoulder and gently muscled arm. He's never seen Noah out of the uniform and finds himself abruptly furious and turned on and miserable, because Noah is _stunning_ but Noah has been dead for seven years. He's never going to wear that tank top again, and he's never going to smile like that, and Ronan knows without hesitation that this is a boy he could have ruined himself for.

Might, still.

He gets up, snags the rest of the case of beer out of the fridge, and curls up with the laptop again. He presses his back to the wall for an anchor. If Noah comes back while he's watching these, he'll probably throw him out the goddamn window again. He pushes play. The video resumes on Noah's laugh, loud enough to be rude and with a hint of a nasal bray to it. He cups both hands at the person shooting the film with middle fingers extended. He's still laughing when he shoves off with his other foot and builds up speed, racing to the iron safety rail, and in a beautiful athletic maneuver kicks the board and himself up onto it, arms out for balance, back flexing. But then he catches the trucks on the bar and launches himself without grace into the concrete, face first. Ronan winces instinctively at the impact on bare skin and the yowl of surprise and pain—another sound he's never heard out of his friend's mouth.

"Oh _shit_ ," says the boy filming. He jogs over to Noah, who rolls onto his back.

His forearms are torn up and his lip is split, his hands are shaking and his eyes are a little wet, but he's laughing again, grinning, spattered in his own blood and _so perfect_. Ronan's heart is in his throat, a stone that he wants to retch up out of himself. Noah turns those hands to flip off the camera again and thumps his head back onto the concrete with a small groan. Ronan clicks to the user's profile and finds five other videos.

He watches them all: sees Noah in a hoodie taking a hit off a joint with heavy eyes under a full moon in the woods, smoke curling around his face and touching his cheeks like careful fingers. Sees him screaming the lyrics to a song Ronan will never know, nasal and off-key and raucous and drunk, looking happier than he's ever been. Sees him skating, smiling, flirting, living.

He closes the laptop when it's over, chugs another beer, and crosses the hall to Noah's room. He collapses onto the bed and mashes his face into it like he could smell that golden handsome perfect dead _fuck_ , if he just tried hard enough, breathed deep enough. His hand presses to the scars on his stomach. A soft cold weight settles over the backs of his thighs and he freezes, lets his own personal haunting put an icy hand on the back of his neck and wriggle down close on his body. It's like a blanket made of winter, barely substantial enough to feel, but there—the suggestion of hips and ribs and fingers that grows a touch denser the longer they rest on him.

He can't speak.

Noah kisses the side of his neck with an open mouth and then subsides, lying on top of him until he starts to shiver and jerk with the cold. Neither says a word for a long while, until Noah shifts to the bed and he lifts his head to meet his eyes.

"I didn't know," Noah murmurs.

"I won't tell if—"

"No," he says. He blinks, and the smudgy grey shadows of him flicker. "I'd like them to see. I forgot. I don't know if they'd have liked me, then."

"Fuck that," Ronan says, but what he means is, _god I would have_.

 

           

           

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, I get too emotional about the thought of Noah as a pop-punk kid during the oughts who had an absurd car and liked to skateboard and chill.


End file.
